Sarah Michelle Gellar

2.1. 1980s: Acting beginnings

At the age of four, Sarah Michelle Gellar was discovered by a talent agent in a restaurant in Upper Manhattan. Two weeks later, she auditioned for the television film An Invasion of Privacy. During the audition, she impressed the directors by reading not only her own lines but also those of Valerie Harper, leading to her being cast in the role. The film premiered on CBS in January 1983.

As a child, Gellar appeared in numerous television commercials for major brands such as Shake 'n Bake, Avon, and Burger King. A notable 1982 Burger King commercial, in which she claimed Burger King made larger and better-tasting burgers than competitor McDonald's, is considered one of the first attack ads in the fast-food industry. This commercial reportedly led to McDonald's suing all parties involved, including Gellar, and allegedly banning her from their restaurants. In a 2004 interview, she recalled the difficulty of this ban during her childhood, stating, "I wasn't allowed to eat there. It was tough because, when you're a little kid, McDonald's is where all your friends have their birthday parties, so I missed out on a lot of apple pies." During this period, she also worked as a model for Wilhelmina Models.

In the 1980s, Gellar took on minor film roles, including Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984) as Phil's daughter (uncredited), and had scenes cut from Crossroads (1986) and Funny Farm (1988). She secured a more substantial role as the daughter of a prostitute in the 1989 B thriller High Stakes. Her television appearances included a safety skit on Late Night with David Letterman on November 11, 1985, and guest roles in series such as Spenser: For Hire and Crossbow. At nine years old, she performed in the off-Broadway production The Widow Claire and appeared in the Kids Klassics Sing Along videos Camp Melody and USS Songboat. In 1989, she briefly served as a co-host for the syndicated teen talk show Girl Talk.

2.2. 1990s: Mainstream breakthrough and rise to prominence

In March 1990, Gellar portrayed 13-year-old Mollie in the initial production of Neil Simon's play Jake's Women at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California. In 1991, she was cast as a young Jacqueline Bouvier in the miniseries A Woman Named Jackie, which went on to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series.

Gellar secured her first leading role in 1992 as Sydney Orion Rutledge, a manipulative mayor's daughter, in the syndicated teen serial Swans Crossing, which explored the lives of affluent teenagers. She found that playing a "villainous" character demanded "better and more varied acting skills," and the weekly payment from the show provided crucial financial support for her and her mother. The series ran for 65 episodes and earned her two Young Artist Award nominations for Best Young Actress.

In 1993, Gellar made her debut on the ABC soap opera All My Children as Kendall Hart, the long-lost teenage daughter of the character Erica Kane (Susan Lucci). She was praised for possessing the acting talent and "forceful personality" needed to match Lucci's experience, with Kendall envisioned as a younger version of Erica. Her performance was highly successful, with "longtime fans of the soap saw her as the second coming of Erica." Writers expanded her role due to her positive reception, and she became a household name in the soap opera genre. In 1995, at the age of eighteen, she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series for her role. That same year, Gellar departed the show and relocated to Los Angeles to pursue other acting opportunities. Her next role was as a spoiled adolescent in the Walt Disney television film Beverly Hills Family Robinson, which aired on ABC in January 1997.

After reviewing the script for Joss Whedon's television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which centered on Buffy Summers, a teenager tasked with battling occult foes and supernatural events, Gellar initially screen tested for the role of Cordelia Chase. Whedon then requested her to audition for the title role. The series premiered in March 1997 to widespread critical and popular acclaim. Gellar's portrayal of Buffy, a character designed to subvert the stereotypical female horror movie victim, was recognized by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 100 greatest female characters in American television. Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran for seven seasons and 144 episodes. During its run, Gellar received five Teen Choice Awards, the Saturn Award for Best Genre Television Actress, and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress - Television Series Drama. She performed vocally in the series' musical episode "Once More, with Feeling", which led to the release of an original cast album in 2002.

During the early run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar made her first significant film appearances in two successful slasher films. In I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), she played the ill-fated beauty queen Helen Shivers. While Washington Post described the cast as "solid," the San Francisco Chronicle found the film "competent but uninspired." Produced on a budget of 17.00 M USD, the film grossed 125.00 M USD globally. For her performance, Gellar received a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Supporting Actress - Horror and an MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Breakthrough Performance. In Scream 2 (1997), Gellar portrayed the equally ill-fated and vain Sorority sister Cici Cooper. She filmed her scenes between Buffy shoots and had just completed I Know What You Did Last Summer. Despite the demanding schedule, she agreed to appear in Scream 2 without reading the script, based on the success of the first film. Scream 2 grossed over 172.00 M USD worldwide.

In January 1998, Gellar hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time, returning as host in May 1999 and October 2002. She also made two cameo appearances in May 2000, including one where she introduced Britney Spears' performance of "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know". In 1998, she provided the voice for the Gwendy Doll in Small Soldiers and for the character Marie in the King of the Hill episode "And They Call It Bobby Love". Gellar's cameo as a girl in the high school cafeteria in the sleeper hit She's All That (1999) was followed by her first top-billed film role as a struggling restaurant owner in the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible (1999). The film received negative reviews and was a box office flop, but Roger Ebert described her as "lovely" in what he called an "old-fashioned" comedy.

In Roger Kumble's Cruel Intentions (1999), a modern adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses, Gellar starred as Kathryn Merteuil, a cocaine addict skilled in manipulation. Ebert noted her effectiveness as "a bright girl who knows exactly how to use her act as a tramp," and Kumble praised her as "the most professional actor I ever worked with." The film was a box office success, grossing 75.00 M USD worldwide, and subsequently became a cult classic. Gellar and co-star Selma Blair won the Best Kiss award at the 2000 MTV Movie Awards. In Angel, a spin-off series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar reprised her titular role for a three-episode arc beginning in 1999.

2.3. 2000s: Film success and established actress

In 2000, Gellar appeared as a film studio executive in the HBO series Sex and the City episode "Escape from New York". Her next film was James Toback's independent drama Harvard Man (2001), in which she starred as Cindy Bandolini, the "sharp and shrewd" daughter of a mobster. According to Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, this role, along with Cruel Intentions, helped her shed her "good girl" image.

In 2002, Gellar portrayed Daphne Blake in the live action-comedy Scooby-Doo. For the production, she underwent training with a Hong Kong wire team and commuted between Queensland and California every two weeks due to her concurrent commitment to Buffy. Despite negative reviews, A. O. Scott of The New York Times observed that her performance infused "a snarl of Powerpuff feminism to her character's ditzy stereotype." With a global gross of 275.00 M USD, Scooby-Doo became Gellar's most widely seen film at the time. Her role earned her the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress - Comedy. She co-hosted the 2002 MTV Movie Awards with Jack Black, which attracted 7.1 million viewers on its June 6 broadcast, achieving the show's highest rating ever at that point.

During her expanding film career, Gellar continued her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but decided to leave the series after its seventh season. She explained her decision as a "personal" one, stating, "This isn't about leaving for a career in movies, or in theater - it's more of a personal decision. I need a rest." In a feature for Esquire magazine, Gellar expressed her pride in her work on Buffy, stating, "I truly believe that it is one of the greatest shows of all time and it will go down in history as that. And I don't feel that that is a cocky statement. We changed the way that people looked at television."

Following the conclusion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar reprised her role as Daphne in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004). Like its predecessor, Scooby-Doo 2 was a commercial success despite a negative critical reception. In Takashi Shimizu's The Grudge (2004), she portrayed Karen Davis, an exchange student in Tokyo who becomes entangled in a supernatural curse. The film received mixed reviews from critics but was a significant box office hit, grossing over 110.00 M USD in North America and 187.00 M USD globally. She received an MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Frightened Performance and a Teen Choice Award nomination for Choice Movie Actress - Thriller.

Gellar provided her voice for the character Gina Vendetti in The Simpsons episode "The Wandering Juvie", which aired in March 2004. She also began voicing several recurring characters in the animated television series Robot Chicken in 2005, a role she continued until 2018. Gellar starred in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (2006) as Krysta Now, a psychic adult film star who develops a reality television series based on her prophetic visions. Drawn to the film's "batshit ambitious" ideas, she accepted the role without reading the script. Southland Tales polarized critics upon its debut at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and had a limited theatrical release. However, J. Hoberman for Village Voice noted that the director elicited a "memorable" comic performance from Gellar, and the film later garnered a cult following.

In 2006, Gellar briefly reprised the role of Karen in the sequel The Grudge 2. She also starred in Asif Kapadia's psychological thriller The Return as Joanna Mills, a businesswoman haunted by childhood memories and the mysterious death of a young woman. The Return was a critical and commercial failure, grossing only 11.00 M USD. Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times called it a "career stagnation."

In 2007, Gellar lent her voice to the characters Ella and April O'Neil in Happily N'Ever After and TMNT, respectively. She starred in the romantic comedy Suburban Girl and the drama The Air I Breathe, both of which premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and were released in January 2008. In Suburban Girl, she played Brett Eisenberg, a New York City editor and the love interest of a much older businessman (Alec Baldwin). In The Air I Breathe, Gellar portrayed Sorrow, an up-and-coming pop singer. The New York Times described the latter as a "gangster movie with delusions of grandeur," while DVD Talk noted that "her character here has the deepest emotional arc, and she hits all the right notes."

2.4. 2010s: Continued work and breaks

The psychological thriller Possession, in which Gellar starred as a lawyer whose life is disrupted after a car accident leaves her husband and brother-in-law in comas, faced various release dates in the United States between 2008 and 2009 due to financial issues at Yari Film Group. The film was eventually released directly to DVD in March 2010.

Gellar took a two-year hiatus from acting following the birth of her daughter in 2009. In 2011, she signed on to star in and serve as an executive producer for The CW's Ringer, where she played the dual role of twin sisters, one of whom is on the run and assumes the wealthy life of the other. Gellar stated that her decision to return to television was partly because it allowed her to balance her work with raising her family. Despite a significant fan base, the series received mixed reviews and was canceled after its first season. For her performance, she received several award nominations, including a Teen Choice Award for Choice Television Actress - Drama.

In September 2011, Gellar made a guest appearance on All My Children before the show's conclusion. She portrayed a patient at Pine Valley Hospital who tells Maria Santos that she is "Erica Kane's daughter" and claims to have seen vampires before they became popular, a clear reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She voiced different characters in the American Dad! episodes "Virtual In-Stanity" (November 2011) and "Adventures in Hayleysitting" (December 2012). On September 30, 2012, she reprised her role as Gina Vendetti in "Moonshine River", the premiere episode of The Simpsons' season 24.

A long-time admirer of Robin Williams, Gellar learned that he was developing the CBS single-camera sitcom The Crazy Ones (2013-2014). She contacted her friend Sarah de Sa Rego, the wife of Williams' best friend, Bobcat Goldthwait, to lobby for a co-starring role. She secured the part of Sydney Roberts, an advertising director who runs an agency with her father. The first episode attracted 15.52 million viewers. Digital Spy noted that Williams "shares a warm, genuine chemistry with his on-screen offspring Gellar," despite the series receiving a mixed critical response. The series was canceled after one season, but Gellar earned the People's Choice Award for Favorite Actress in a New Television Series for her role.

In Veronika Decides to Die (2009), Gellar starred as Veronika, a young depressed woman who rediscovers the joy of life after learning she has only days to live following a suicide attempt. After theatrical releases abroad, the film was released domestically via VOD in January 2015. Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter found Gellar to be "reasonably compelling" in what he described as a "ponderous and silly misfire."

Following the conclusion of The Crazy Ones and the death of Williams, Gellar took another sabbatical from screen acting, explaining that she had "been working [her] entire life" and "needed that break" to concentrate on raising her children. During this period, she appeared as Cinderella in a March 2015 episode of Whitney Avalon's YouTube channel series Princess Rap Battle. She voiced a recurring character known as the Seventh Sister in the second season of the animated science fiction series Star Wars Rebels (2015-2016). Gellar also guest starred as herself in the series finale of The Big Bang Theory, which aired on May 16, 2019. Gellar was attached to several television projects that ultimately were not picked up for production, including a 2016 pilot for a series based on Cruel Intentions, in which she reprised her role as Kathryn Merteuil.

2.5. 2020s: Film comeback and television focus

In 2021, Gellar voiced Teela in Kevin Smith's Masters of the Universe: Revelation, an animated series for Netflix. In 2022, she made her first film appearances in 13 years with brief roles in Clerks III and Do Revenge, released in theaters and on Netflix, respectively, in the same week. Mark Donaldson of Screen Rant characterized these as "low-key return movies" for Gellar, noting Clerks III as "a nod" to her previous work with Smith, and Do Revenge as a reinterpretation of Cruel Intentions for "modern audiences."

At the 2022 San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that Gellar would star in and serve as an executive producer for the Paramount+ supernatural drama series Wolf Pack, which premiered on January 26, 2023. In June 2024, Gellar was cast in a recurring role as Tanya Martin, the CSI chief and Dexter Morgan's boss, in the upcoming drama series Dexter: Original Sin. She also appeared as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race in 2024.

3.1. Business and media

Gellar has been featured on the covers of numerous magazines throughout her career, including Seventeen (February 1998), Nylon, Marie Claire, Vogue, Glamour, Esquire, Allure, Cosmopolitan, FHM, Rolling Stone, and Elle. She was also featured on the cover of Gotham in March 2008, where she discussed the evolution of her style after turning 30, stating, "It sounds clichéd, but when women turn 30, they find themselves. You become more comfortable in your own skin." She has appeared in "Got Milk?" advertisements and in music videos for Stone Temple Pilots' "Sour Girl" and Marcy Playground's "Comin' Up From Behind".

In October 2015, Gellar co-founded Foodstirs, a startup food crafting brand, with entrepreneurs Galit Laibow and Greg Fleishman. The company sells easy-to-make organic baking mixes and kits for families through e-commerce and retail channels. By 2018, Foodstirs products were available at 7,500 retailers nationwide, including Starbucks, Whole Foods, Walmart, WW, and Amazon. Gellar released her own cookbook, Stirring Up Fun with Food, on April 18, 2017. Co-authored with Gia Russo, the book features over 115 food crafting ideas.

3.2. Activism and philanthropy

Gellar has actively advocated for various charitable causes, including breast cancer research, Project Angel Food, Habitat for Humanity, and CARE. Reflecting on her philanthropic work, she stated, "I started because my mother taught me a long time ago that even when you have nothing, there's ways to give back. And what you get in return for that is tenfold. But it was always hard because I couldn't do a lot. I couldn't do much more than just donate money when I was on [Buffy] because there wasn't time. And now that I have the time, it's amazing."

In 1999, Gellar participated in Habitat for Humanity's project to build homes in the Dominican Republic. With Project Angel Food, she delivered healthy meals to people affected by AIDS, and through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, she granted the wishes of sick children to meet her while working on Buffy. In 2007, Gellar was featured in Vaseline's "Skin Is Amazing" campaign, where she agreed to auction nude-posed photos of herself on eBay to raise funds for the Coalition of Skin Diseases, an organization supporting clinical research and patient education.

In 2011, Gellar joined "The Nestlé Share the Joy of Reading Program," which promotes reading among young children during summer breaks. The following year, she was honored with the Tom Mankiewicz Leadership Award at the Beastly Ball at the Los Angeles Zoo. In 2014 and 2015, Gellar hosted two fundraisers for Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA.